Florida

“An attorney representing Florida told a federal three-judge panel in Washington on Thursday that the state may withdraw its request for judicial approval of the registration limits, part of a 2011 rewrite of the state's elections law.”

“Five separate organizations and two individual Florida voters have filed suit in U.S. District Court, claiming that the state's controversial voter purge program is discriminatory. The suit, filed yesterday, is the first on behalf of individuals who were on a list of potential non-citizens flagged for removal from the voter rolls.”

“Government and politics teacher Dawn Quarles' voice goes tight with frustration when she thinks back to how trying to register her students to vote thrust her into the center of Florida's high profile and deeply partisan voting rights controversy. ... ‘I never felt like the voting process was on my side... That's not the way it's supposed to be,’ said Quarles, a registered Republican who was slapped with a $1,000 fine...”

Last night, the faux-news show The Daily Show took on Florida’s new voter registration law.

“...the League of Women Voters of Florida and Rock the Vote will get back to work registering voters, the groups announced Wednesday. ... ‘Failure was never an option in this battle against voter suppression,’ said LWVF President Deirdre Macnab. ‘Now it’s time for our volunteers to work overtime to make up for lost ground.’”

“I count members of the League of Women Voters among my political heroes. Year after year, the League does some of the most important work of our democracy.”

“OUR OPINION: Scott administration should focus on access to voters, not impose obstacles,” Miami Herald

“... Turns out the Division of Elections, working with outdated information from the DHSMV, has been demanding that county elections supervisors purge a number of legal citizens, both natural-born and naturalized, from the voter lists. On Thursday, the Division of Elections announced it was giving up on the use of outdated driver license records.”

According to Dr. Carol Weissert, professor of political science at Florida State University: “Since the passage of this bill, third-party voter registration groups such as the Boy Scouts and the League of Women Voters are not registering people. ... These organizations are often responsible for registering many young people and students on college campuses. Because they’re not doing so like they used to, the ability of people to register to vote has lowered.”

“The League [of Women Voters of FL] is challenging the rules in federal court, but in the meantime, few nonpartisan groups aside from NCLR are registering voters in the state. ... Although the new rules have been in effect less than a year, University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith says it’s clear they're already having an impact.”